


You Mutter on About Infinity

by dinoburger



Category: LISA (Video Games), LISA the pointless
Genre: Internal Conflict, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:42:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24996328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinoburger/pseuds/dinoburger
Summary: You mutter on about infinity...I'm gonna show you what it means.
Kudos: 13





	You Mutter on About Infinity

**Author's Note:**

> if I can think of anymore tags I'll add them later
> 
> this is very lowkey shippy and mostly just about Arnold losing his humanity

_CRACK_

Bone breaks under the blow, too easy. His stomach twists to recognise it but his body remains rigid, muscles coil and flex with such ease. Too much and so little going on in his head.

It’s taken him, beating out a rhythm of punches, impulse, the parts of him eating him alive and the coils of his brain that ache green and red, bleeding him into the haze of infinity.

So Arnold goes on. They’re all just as senseless, all just as much fodder for infinity. So vast, he can barely see himself, feel himself moving through it, banging out into the further folds and further into himself, winding in and unravelling outwards. Reaching perpetual, stream of motion continuous.

Infinite, no start or end. Nobody in particular.

Tunnel vision.

He’s loose, ebbing and flowing with all the ugly parts undone and moving his fists all retaining back to his feet shoulders strong stance surging-

**_CRACK_ **

Loss of self, only parts in motion. Consumed by himself, fragmented, of infinite.

* * *

Arnold Shpitz. That was the name being uttered between jerseyheads, that was the talk of the franchise. You’d heard of him even if you’d never seen him, his presence in these parts was ethereal and looming, like the thickness of the air oozing through the cracks of downtown Olathe. A name that equally dripped with death in this dark, hazy, corpse-strewn place.

Anaconda didn’t know what he expected. He caught glimpses of the man, darting down the red roads. 

At first glance, he really was nothing special, particularly compared to Anaconda’s bizarre visage. He was slight, his dark, receded hair loose and slick strands stuck with sweat to his brow. His face was tense, but otherwise unremarkable.

Then you looked closer, and noticed more. The way he moved, solid and smooth, a small machine of a man powering onwards.

If you got close enough, you could see the colours of downtown glint in the slits of his eyes. Like an oil slick film of red and green, swirling, unnaturally vivid. That same light danced on the sweat that dripped in rivulets down the shape of his toned arms and back.

His head was elsewhere. The tides rolled above him, being pulled under, into the sea of blood - smothering, tasting bile, feeling nothing.

Anaconda had gotten ahead of himself when their eyes locked, the thrill of the hunt still hot in his blood. He let it well up in the palms of his hands and flare into balls of flame.

The distance between them was his advantage, he could take a shot at Arnold before he even came within range to swing a punch.

Smug and smirking, Anaconda launched off his fire - only to see it vanish in a puff of smoke.

Confused, panic twisting inside him, he fired off a few more fireballs, hackles raising as he registered what was happening. 

Arnold moved fast enough to extinguish them in mid-air. His jabs were so quick Anaconda could barely see his fists.

Then Arnold breached the distance between them, in a blur, those few strides taken all at once and his face and fist only so far from Anaconda’s.

All his former cockiness was pulled out from under him, his stomach dropped and he barely staggered out of the way as a punch grazed by him with so much force he could feel it scrape the skin without so much as touching.

Anaconda only just managed to slip away, between the cracks, into the cavities of downtown. He scaled the tunnels on all fours, through the rock, far enough to lose sight of the shorter man completely.

The one thing Arnold couldn’t compete with was Anaconda’s primal ability to climb away and disappear from sight. The snake of 88 earned his title well.

By the time he caught up Arnold seemed to find himself at a dead end with the only other opening several feet above him. After a few attempts to measure his distance and gain some traction to scale the wall, Arnold sighed and turned his back to it, sitting heavily.

Beneath the fire of the franchise, his body ached still.

Anaconda cautiously poked his head out from the cavity above to peer down at the form of Arnold Shpitz below him.

“Awh… giving up already?” Anaconda snickered.

Arnold glanced up and grumbled. “You’re just wasting my time.”

“Don’t like that good ol’ thrill of the chase?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself.” Anaconda shrugged.

While they were both waiting there, he realised he had a captive audience.

“...what are you in it for then?” the snake followed up. “Must’ve joined the franchise for some reason, right? Can’t imagine you need it for intimidation, not with strength like that.”

Arnold hesitated, far from the snappy response Anaconda expected. He couldn’t quite see the look on Arnold’s face, couldn’t see how his lips parted, in a breath of a word that wouldn’t come. He only just heard the small, choked sound that ended in a sigh.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s all the same.” he muttered.

Even so, there was a weight on his voice, on his chest. They lingered there a moment longer, and for a moment, as Anaconda studied him, he wanted to reach down and touch him. 

From this angle he was almost human. There was this palpable feeling of what could have been remorse. Curious.

Arnold pulled himself easily onto his feet once more, flexed his fingers, cracked his neck and pushed onward, returning to downtown’s surface. 

Anaconda watched and waited.

* * *

Arnold examined his hands, barely seeing them, only the patterns on his skin where dark blood had stuck and dried in all the creases in his palms and around the joints and knuckles. Rough and worn and bruised around the brass that bit into him from repeated use.

But they were steady, perfectly steady. No matter how he ached, not a tremor ran through the muscle of his arms. No matter how the world warped around him, he held steady, like it wasn’t him at all. Something completely inhuman.

And he looked out through his eyes at the self he could hardly recognise as his own.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, as if time even mattered at all. His head was a deep, empty haze, swimming.

It was somewhere in the bowels of downtown, an unearthly sound stirred. A voice angelically high, a song he couldn’t identify, as if it were calling from another dimension. Still hazy in the trance of violence, Arnold followed it, through dark passages. There was a tenderness there he swore had never been spoken in this place, divine and otherly.

He could hardly make him out, or chose not to, letting only that voice sit on his consciousness as it flickered duller by the minute.

The shape of Anaconda Virtue on the rocks, singing clear as a bell that echoed through the caverns where Arnold curled beside him. Held himself tight, tight enough to merely lay there and rest, to merely listen in spite of the raw impulse thrumming through him.

Anaconda’s voice grew softer, as he examined Arnold more closely. Arnold kept his body locked in place.

His dark eyes were staring in front, no longer brilliant with the colours of the franchise in the dim light. They were deep, and troubled, and human.

Anaconda very gently trailed his fingertips on the back of Arnold’s shoulders, noting how the muscles shifted, as he squeezed himself even tighter and let his eyes totally shut with a sigh.

Arnold didn’t know when he’d fallen asleep, only that he’d woken up alone, unsure he’d only imagined it.

* * *

_CLANG_

Arnold didn't so much as flinch when the iron bars of the gate were slammed in front of his face.

"...You're unbearable." he griped.

"Can't help being a tease." Anaconda snickered from the other side. "Can't blame a snake for slipping right out between your fingers."

"You're a coward. If you're going to fight me, just get it over with." Arnold gripped the bars.

"Yeah, nah. I'm not about to let you blast my brain into bits. It's cute how bad you want it though."

A quizzical expression crossed Arnold's face before he shook his head. "You don't know that, you could have a chance, if you'd just stop being so pathetic and kill me."

"...you make it sound like you really wanna die." Anaconda was just a couple steps away from the bars, eyeing him cautiously.

Arnold hung his head and sighed. "You had the chance the other day when I passed out beside you. Why didn't you kill me then?"

"Wasn't gonna risk it. Why didn't you?"

Arnold didn't quite have an answer for that. "Sounded nice." he mumbled, cheek pressed to the gate.

Anaconda smirked.

"That and you always get away from me anyway. We’re at a stalemate."

"Seems that way, don't it?" He expected Arnold to get frustrated again and leave soon.

Instead, he followed up the question he’d been asked earlier. "...What did you join the franchise for then?"

Anaconda blinked a few times, before a reptilian grin spread across his features. "I like it here, I like to watch things squirm and die. I like to feel 'em go cold. Been this way for a very long time." he drooled, rolling a split tongue over his teeth.

"I see." Arnold wasn't fazed. "And you'd do the same to me?"

"Of course." he purred, moving in close. "I'm just an animal, Arnie."

"We're just animals…" he echoed.

Arnold could feel Anaconda's breath through the great metal door between them, making him tense.

Anaconda squeaked as his whole body was slammed against the iron, the front of his jersey grabbed and straining vocally in Arnold's balled fists. Another moment where their eyes locked, another moment where Anaconda had been caught off-guard and defenceless, confronted with Arnold in his entirety.

His sheer, unfaltering strength.

But there was no malice in Arnold's face. Maybe fatigue. Something direly human underneath it all.

There was no satisfaction from having startled the other.

Anaconda's throat was tight, nothing came out. Nor did Arnold attempt to speak, or gloat, or scold.

With the seams of his jersey pulled painfully tight against him, the fabric screeched and tore clean away, as easily as if Arnold were tearing paper and not stubborn synthetic.

Anaconda turned tail and ran. He'd find another jersey.

* * *

“What fold were you on anyway? Getting up there, right?”

Arnold shrugged uncomfortably. For most jerseyheads, this would be the perfect opportunity to brag. Arnold’s expression dropped, he felt nauseous even considering it.

He was climbing the folds to infinity in a total blur. Every time he stumbled back into the blood lake, hearing that number climb higher and higher always came as a shock.

“What’sa matter Arnie?”

He shook his head.

“...You really aren’t a whole lot like the others, huh.”

“I am what I am, nothing special. I just… gave into it. The franchise and myself.”

Anaconda cocked his head.

There it was, nonetheless, this last, fleeting part of Arnold’s humanity that Anaconda kept glimpsing. That he kept reaching for, out of curiosity if nothing else.

He could see it, in this overwhelmingly powerful yet equally vulnerable man before him. Like many things that had died in his hands, that he could hold it and watch it die. Even while Arnold waited for it to be snuffed out, it squirmed, convulsed.

Still begging silently to be held, to be felt.

This little piece of humanity Anaconda couldn’t ever have found in himself.

Held him on a knife’s edge.

Anaconda’s face was less maniacal now, soft. He shuddered as Arnold reached out to smooth back his hair and feel over his scars.

“It’s too late for this, Annie.” he mumbled and Anaconda’s heart lurched, never having heard his name spoken so gently.

Maybe this was more than a morbid fascination. Something he’d never known he’d had to lose.

Where the franchise was Anaconda’s self fulfilment, a place where the outcast belonged, it was Arnold’s self destruction. It was his demons, eating him from the inside out. 

Held each other, bloodied, dizzy beasts they were, fading into infinity. Consuming itself, eternal.

“‘Annie’… that’s cute.” Anaconda smiled fondly.


End file.
